Author Archives: admin

A Sketch on Habermas and Modern Society

Jurgen Habermas was born in 1929 and raised by a father with Nazi sympathies. He was in the Hitler youth and was briefly sent to man the Western defences. The ‘liberation’ occasioned a reassessment. The brutal reality of Auschwitz gradually emerged and in his gymnasium studies Habermas began to read Marx, Engels and Sartre. He… Read More »

Making Social Change Happen

In my forthcoming Healthy Societies: Policy, Practice and Obstacles, I pick up on the longstanding notion that radical change in the United Kingdom in general and England in particular is more than unlikely to be accomplished via parliament. As Ralph Miliband noted many years ago, what we have is a ‘capitalism democracy’; that is, a… Read More »

Neither ‘Either’, Nor ‘Or’

The title of this blog is one I’ve always wanted to deploy. All being well, I may possibly revisit it in a future publication. The crux of the issue for now is that not only do the theoretical standpoints and analyses of different thinkers and writers often overlap, but that sorting out and coming to… Read More »

A Sociological Autobiography: 110 – Getting Old(er)

I recently posted a photo of myself on Twitter/X with the caption, ’on my way to the pro-Palestinian protest in London’. Unusually for me, it solicited quite some attention, with 7.6 thousand likes and 1.2 thousand retweets. It also provoked a considerable number of responses (which I didn’t bother to count). Many of these were… Read More »

A Sociological Autobiography: 109 – Books Read Over Seven Years

I have increased my rate of reading since retirement. I now read a couple a week on average. For anyone with nothing better to do, here’s my reading over the last seven years. 2017 Dexter: Ted Dexter declares Simenon: Maigret, Longnon and the gangsters Talbot & Weaver: Flight of the martlets Rutherford: Unexpected Simenon: Maigret… Read More »

Sociological Theorists: Stuart Hall

While Stuart Hall was not a sociologist his work has a clear and lasting relevance to practitioners of the discipline, especially to those interested in culture. Along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams he was a founder of a school of thought known as ‘British Cultural Studies; he was a founder too of the New… Read More »

Sociological Theorists: Arlie Russell Hochschild

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a pioneer of theory and research on ‘emotional labour’, in the process opening up a novel field of enquiry. Resisting any temptation to ‘reduce’ the emotions either to biological or social phenomena, she argues that they are uniquely related to both action and cognition. Emotions for her, as Simon Williams summarises… Read More »

A Sociological Autobiography: 108 – Another Book?

I have over time reached the conclusion that as a teacher I communicate best with undergraduates, and that as a writer I communicate best with academic colleagues. I rarely teach now, but I have continued to write a decade or more into retirement. Recently a colleague has quite rightly raised the issue of why we… Read More »

A handful of new poems

Garibaldi Square   Old men lean to each other gesticulating their opinions, each like a frustrated lover taunted by fretful minions.   The shaded seats are gone, as if permanently selected, a citizen assembly that’s won the right to reward its elected.   We accept our lot and hunch, back to the piercing sun, pasta… Read More »

Ruling Mindsets

The motivation behind blogging was for me the opportunity it afforded to ‘think aloud’. It was unnecessary to be concerned about reviewers and editors. I could say what I wanted, as it were, uncensored. 400+ blogs later, I took a time-out to write my latest book on the idea of a healthy society. Now I’m… Read More »